Supplementary Study Material for Students of English: WHAT IS GRAMMAR?

GRAMMAR

Etymologically the term 'grammar goes back (through French and Latin) to a Greek word 'Grammatika or 'Grammatika techno’ which may be translated as 'the art of writing'.

The Greeks considered grammar to be a branch of philosophy concerned with the 'art of writing’. Helios defined grammar as "the science that shows us how to write and speak correctly".

By the middle age grammar has come to be regarded as a set of rules usually in the form of a text book, dictating correct usage. So in the widest and the traditional sense, grammar comes to mean a set of normative and prescriptive rules in order to set up a 'standard' of correct usage.

Development of Grammar:

One of the early English grammars is William Lyly's "Short Introduction to Grammar* (16th century) in which English Grammar was described in terms of the grammatical categories of Latin. This tendency to prescribe rules was established by Bishop Robert Lowth who in 1762 published "A Short Introduction to English Grammar'. The aim was "every phrase and form of construction whether it right or not and ... besides showing what is right ... printing out what is wrong".

The next important work was Lindlay Murray’s "The English Grammar"(1795). Murray abandoned the practice of describing the English grammar in terms of Latin grammar. However, the appeal to Latin for correctness was not. The most notorious example of Normative grammar was Nesfield's "Manual of English Grammar and Compositor"(1898)

Developments taking place in the 19^th century were characterized by a radical shift from the rigid classical normative approach to a more structural one which sought into focus the need to adopt a descriptive and analytical approach. Traditional, conventional grammar was considered to be belonging to a pre scientific era. Today most linguists agree that grammar should be descriptive. The change in the approach is exemplified by description of grammar advanced by Grattan and Gurney (1928): "The Grammar of a Lange is not a list of rules imposed upon its speakers by scholastic authorities but is scientific record of actual phenomena of that language written and spoken”. If any community habitually uses certain forms of speech, these forms are part of the grammar of the speech of that community. The authority has shifted from the grammarian to the native speakers, particularly native educated speakers. Grammar has no longer prescribes norms of correct usage but describes what people do when they speaks their language. The job of a grammarian is to describe how the language is used and not how it should be used. It also does not exist between the covers of the book written down and to be learnt by heart. Grammar is a branch of linguistics which is defined as a scientific study of language. Phonology deals with sound units, Lexis with words, grammar with structures and semantics with meaning. The two areas that come under grammar are Morphology and Syntax. The study of phonemes is phonology. The study of how phonemes combine to form morphemes is Morpho-phonology. The study of how morphemes combine to form words is Morphology. The study of words is Lexis. How the words combine to form sentences is Syntax. Grammar is to do with both Morphology and syntax.

Misconceptions about Grammar:

Grammar has been studied from the early days of literary civilization both from the point of view of individual languages and from that of general theory. An average educated person is no stranger to the word grammar .We all have an idea of what it means, though the concept is shrouded in vagueness, wrongheaded notions and ill founded associations. There is a great deal of confusion about it because of the very many different ways in which the term is used. There are quite a few misconceptions about grammar. They are;

1 A grammar of a language is a book written about it. The word grammar is used to refer to a grammar book, a book about grammar. The danger of this notion is that the grammar of the language is what is presented by the author in that book.

2. The grammar of the language is found only in the written language. Spoken languages have no grammar or they fluctuate! as much that they are only partially grammatical. In the traditional approach to grammar importance is given to the written language and the spoken language is ignored. The written language is considered primary. This view point has been supported by the etymology of the word 'grammar. It is derived from the Greek word 'Grammatik' or Grammatik techno which means "the art of writing". In the opinion of the modern grammarians written for is only a poor and imperfect version of the spoken form. It is the spoken form of a language that comes first in the history of every language. There are hundreds of languages in the work that have no written form and not vice versa and all these languages have grammars. In the history of every individual it is the spoken form that is learnt first. In everyday life it is the spoken form that is more often used. For the modern descriptive grammarians spoken form is primary and the written form is secondary. It is a misconception to say that the spoken language does not have grammar. Written language is more grammatical in the sense that it often indicates grammatical relationships much more clearly than the spoken form.

3. Another misconception is that some languages have grammar, others do not. Chinese for instance, has no grammar. English has precious little. Latin is full of grammar. What is being talked about here is 'inflection' Chinese has no inflections. In other words in Chinese all the words keep the same shape. Latin is an inflectional language. It is a synthetic language. The verb 'amo' (I love) has over one hundred forms. English has only a limited inflection. It is an analytical language. The verb 'to love' has four forms : love, loves. loved, loving. The verb 'to take' has five forms: take, takes, took, taking, taken. In Chinese the word for ‘love’ always remains the same. To say on this ground that a language has grammar or not is to use the word grammar in a very restricted way. It refers only to 'Morphology (the actual form of words) and it omits altogether the syntax (the order in which words are arranged)

4. Grammar is something that can be good or bad, correct or incorrect. It is bad grammar to split infinitive, to say It is me!.

5. Some people know the grammar of the language. Others do not. This implies that a language does not have a grammar until it is made explicit and can be learnt from a grammar book. This also implies that only an explicit knowledge of the grammar of a language helps one to speak the language grammatically. This misconception ignores the facts that each adult speaker of language has some type of 'mental grammar that is, a form of internal linguistic knowledge which operates in the production and recognition of appropriately structured expressions in that language. This grammar is sub conscious and is not the result of any teaching. It also ignores another concept of grammar which involves what might be considered linguistic etiquette, that is, the identification of the proper or best structures in a language. A third view of grammar involves the study and analysis of the structures found in a language, usually with the aim of establishing a description of the grammar of English. This is what is normally meant by grammar. It is a proven fact that the 'grammaticalness! of one's language is not dependent on one's explicit it knowledge of the grammar of the language.

6. Another misconception is that all languages have the same grammar. It ignores the fact that every language is unique and individualistic and as such the grammar of a language can never be applied to another language. Every language must have grammar of its own and the grammar should come not from another language, not from grammarians but from the speakers of that language- native educated speakers.

Objections of the Modern Grammarians to the Traditional Grammarians

Normative Rules are unacceptable:

Helios defined Grammar as "the science that shows us how to write and speak correctly." This notion of correctness dominated the traditional approach to grammar. In the widest and traditional sense, grammar comes to mean a set of normative, prescriptive and deductive rules usually in the form of a text book dictating correct usage. These rules dictate that an infinitive should not be split. It is me is incorrect and it should be It is I, teach us 'the distinction between owing and 'due, 'each other' and 'one another' and so on. The grammarians until the 19th century were the law givers. People brought up in the older tradition have come to associate with grammar something of the awesome inflexibility of the Bible. Right and wrong in traditional grammar were as distinct as black and white in the old tradition. The traditional notion was that the authors of grammar books were to be completely trusted. Grammarians are intolerant of deviation, and even the slightest deviation was held to scorn. But the modern grammarians who believe in a scientific approach to the study of grammar have rejected the normative rules of traditional grammar on many grounds:

Historical Fallacy:

The traditionalists held the belief that a language does not change and that the ideal English is to be found in the good old English. The traditionalists refused to accept the fact that linguistic change is neither for the better nor for the worse, they based their description on the language of a bygone golden age. Thus, many of their examples were taken from Dryden and Goldsmith, when they ought to have been describing contemporary usage.

Logical Fallacy:

Logical Fallacy refers to the assumption that the laws of logic and the principles of grammar are the same. The traditionalists assumed that the laws of logic govern the universe and that language perfectly mirrors the universe. It would thus follow that language is governed by the laws of logic. This is referred to as the logical fallacy.

The assumption that language mirrors the logical structure of the universe leads to a number of complications. For example : ‘more perfect’ and ‘rounder’. The traditional grammarians argued that which is perfect cannot be improved upon. Nothing can be better than the perfect. Hence the expression ‘more perfect’ is illogical and incorrect. Similarly, either something is round or not round. There is no sense in saying ‘rounder’. Yet, in spite of the fact that grammarians frown upon these usages, native speakers use them quite frequently.

Another example of the logical fallacy is the statement that English has three tenses: past, present and future. Now it is true that English can express the past time, the present time and the future time, but it does not follow that English has three tenses. In fact, English has only two tenses, the past tense and the present tense.

Tense is a grammatical category seen in the form or shape of the verb. Malayalam, for example, has three tenses, past, present and future. Let’s compare the three different forms.

Ooti - (ran) , ootunnu - (runs), ootum - (will run), natannu – (walked), natakkunnu – (walks), natakkum-(will walk) It has to be noted that the corresponding forms in English exhibit a two way contrast only(walk-walked).

Traditionally grammarians say that ‘will walk’ is the future tense of ‘walk’. This, however, is a result of the mixing up of time reference and tense. Notice that ‘will’ is in the present tense, while ‘would’ is in the past, just as ‘can’ is in the present and ‘could’ in the past. ‘Will, shall, can, may, would, should, could, might…’ are all ‘modals’. Some of them are in the past tense and some in the present tense. Hence there is no point in saying that ‘will walk’ is in the future tense. In a sentence like ‘I will go’ the verb is in the present tense but it has future time reference.

Consider the following sentence, all of which have future time reference:

I am going to Bombay tomorrow.(Present tense)

I go to Bombay this afternoon.(Present tense)

I will go to Bombay next month. (Present tense)

If you went to Bombay tomorrow, when would you return? (Past tense)

There are different ways of expressing all kinds of future meaning in English. The use of ‘shall’ and ‘will’ is only one of them. Hence it would be incorrect to hold the view that English has three tenses.

Latinate Fallacy:

Latinate Fallacy can be described as the fallacy of using the framework of one language in the description of another. Most of the grammarians who wrote English Grammars were trained in Latin grammar. Since the Latin framework was all they knew and since they believed that it could be applied to all languages, they used the Latin framework to describe the English language.

Now, English and Latin have different structures and hence we cannot use the Latin system to examine English. In pronouns, English has three cases: the neutral, the genitive and the ‘objective’, as illustrated by he, his and him. In nouns proper, English has only two: the neutral and the possessive, as illustrated by John and John’s. It has to be noted that the word John does not undergo any inflectional variation(eg. The word endings do not change) whether it is the subject, the direct object, the indirect object or the addressee:
John has come.(subject)

She taught John linguistics.(indirect object)

She loved John.(direct object)

John, have you seen the paper?(addressee)

It can be inferred now that English nouns have only two cases: the genitive and the neutral. Therefore it is unjustified to analyze English nouns in terms of the Latin framework of nominative, accusative, dative etc.,

It can be inferred that it is wrong to impose on a language the grammatical framework of some other language. Each language is in some sense unique and has therefore a unique grammar.

Descriptive and Prescriptive Approach:

A prescriptive grammarian tells the speakers what forms and what rules they ought to use, a descriptive grammarian describes the forms and rules that native speakers actually use.

Traditional grammarians started prescribing their do’s and don’t’s when they discovered that current speech was quite different from the kinds of languages they imagined to be pure and beautiful. John Dryden, for example, didn’t like prepositions at the end of a sentence. He said they were ugly. And every grammarian since Dryden blindly repeated that a sentence ending with a preposition was ‘incorrect or ugly’. The fact remains that sentences like ‘Who did you speak to?’ and ‘This is the house we lived in’ are quite common in English.

While a prescriptive traditionalist would insist that it is wrong on the part of the native speakers to end a sentence with a preposition; a descriptive linguist would simply observe that such a construction is acceptable because native speakers use it.

Both the prescriptive and the descriptive grammarians make use of ‘rules’. The prescriptive grammarian’s rules, like the laws of the government, tell the people what they ought to do. The descriptive grammarian’s rules, like the laws of physics or biology, describe what actually happens of is done.

Descriptive Approach

Prescriptive Approach

- Linguists attempt to ‘describe’ the grammar of the language that exists in the minds of its speakers, i.e. to create a model of speakers’ mental grammar.

- The resulting descriptive grammar describes person’s basic linguistic knowledge. It explains how it is possible to speak and understand it and summarize what speakers know about the sounds, words and phrases and sentences of their language.

- Creating a descriptive grammar involves observing the language and trying to ‘discover’ the principles or rules that govern it.

- Descriptive rules accept as given the patterns speakers actually use and try to account for them. Descriptive rules allow for different dialects of a language and even variation within one dialect.

- Prescriptivists tell you someone’s idea of what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

- Prescriptive rules make a value judgment about the correctness of certain utterances and generally try to enforce a single standard. For example: don’t end a sentence with a preposition: don’t say ‘Where are you from?’

- The people who prescribe grammar ‘make up’ the rules of the grammar.

- They attempt to impose the rules for speaking and writing on people without much regard for what the majority of educated speakers of a language actually say and write.

- So-called prescriptive grammar usually focuses only on a few issues and leaves the rest of a language undescribed (unprescribed?). In fact, from the linguistic point of view, this is not grammar at all.

Concept of correctness and social acceptability:

A ‘Standard’ variety of a language is that which is generally used by educated speakers and for which reference works like dictionaries and grammars are available. It has to be noted that ‘standard’ variety refers to social acceptability and to the prestige accorded to a variety.(then R.P.English, now its US English).

Speech and Writing:

Traditional Grammarians held that the spoken form of a language was inferior to the written form. The spoken form for them was a corrupt version of the written form. As a result, their descriptions were based on the written language and they tended to ignore the spoken language altogether. The modern linguist, on the other hand, believes that the spoken form is primary and that systems of writing are based on the spoken language.

There are several reasons for our saying that the spoken form is primary and the written form secondary: (a) In our daily life, we make use of speech more than we make use of writing. (b) There are many languages for which no writing system has been evolved as yet, but there is no living language in which there is only the written form and no spoken form. (c) Even in the case of those languages which have a writing system, we find that, historically, the written form appeared much later than the spoken form. (d) Children learn to speak their mother tongue first and learn to write only later.

In English number system there are 3 common ways of deriving plurals from singulars.

1) add –s cat, cats

2) zero ending sheep, sheep

3) Vowel modification mouse, mice

In many ways, the written language is a far worse vehicle of communication than the spoken. In English we have 44 phonemes but they are represented by only 26 graphemes (letters) of which three letters – C, Q, X – are redundant. The way we use the graphemes is notoriously inefficient. The sound / k / : Cook / kuk/ oblique / Əblik/ Pick / pik /quality/ kwality / Six / siks /

The letter ‘a’ has to stand for several phonemes

Fat/ fæt /fate/ feit/ Fall/ fכ:l /father / fæðƏ/ Village/ vilid3 /want/ wכnt Share ∫ЄƏ

English spelling is notoriously inefficient when it comes to representing the phonemes.

More striking is the failure of the writer language to carry much of English intonation.

“She is pretty”, uttered with a falling or rising intonation is a bold statement but when it is said with a falling rising intonation, it conveys to the listener the message that there are some reservations. Probably implying that she may be pretty but immoral etc. This cannot be represented in written English. “She is pretty” with a falling intonation is a statement. The same said with a rising intonation becomes a question, a simplified way. In writing a change in the order of the sentence has to be made to formulate the question form of ‘she is pretty’ – ‘is she pretty?’ Here intonation performs a grammatical function. Intonation can also mark grammatical distinctions that are marked by punctuation –

‘ She speaks Tamil, naturally’

‘ She speaks Tamil naturally’

‘ My brother, who is in London.

‘ My brother who is in London’

This shows that intonation is often a mark of a grammatical distinction that is made in writing.

Form and Meaning:

One of the misconceptions about grammar is that grammar is essentially concerned with meaning. This view is not shared by modern linguists. They place grammar between phonology and semantics. While phonology studies speech sounds, semantics studies meaning. Grammar is to do with structure – the structure of the words in terms of morphemes (Morphology) and the structure of sentences in terms of words (syntax).

It is easy enough to show that grammatical distinctions are not semantic one by indicating many cases where there is no one-to-one correspondence.

An often quoted example is oats and wheat. The former is clearly plural and the latter singular. This is partly indicated by the plural suffix –s. This is further reinforced by the fact that we say “The oats are” and “The wheat is’. This does not mean that the English treat ‘oats’ as more than one and wheat as one. Oats is grammatically plural and wheat is grammatically singular. ‘oats’ belongs to the grammatical category of singular +s. While wheat belongs to the category of zero ending – wheat + ∅ (zero morpheme).Since oats has the plural number, it takes the plural verb. Since wheat carries no plural ending, it takes singular verb. It is a matter of form and has nothing to do with meaning.

There is no one-to-one correspondence between sex and gender. Traditional grammar speaks of gender in English. The English does not have a gender system at all. That is, it does not have grammatical gender. It has only a biological gender where nouns get classified according to the sex. English can be said to have gender only if English nouns can be classified in terms of agreement with articles, adjectives or verbs. We have words that refer to male/female creatures – bull/cow, stallion/mare. This is a lexical feature, not a grammatical one, related to sex and not gender. Neither the same lexical feature we have names for small creatures – lamb, piglet = there is often a quartet – a generic name (sheep) male (ram) female (ewe). Young sheep (lamb). The choice of pronouns (he/his/him/she/her/it/its) is a matter of sex. It refers to male, she to female and it to the sexless objects. There are sex references. Not only do we say: “The man has left his bag” we also say ‘the cat has left his food’ if the cat is a Tom-cat.the inanimate objects may be treated either as female or male. For example, ships are treated as female. Men speak of their vehicles as female. The choice here is arbitrary and such nouns are a few in number. English can be said to have a gender only if it has a different article /adjective for masculine and feminine, as it is in French.

The confusion between tense and tense is to do with the misconception that grammar is related to meaning. The traditional grammar takes of 3 tenses but the fact is that English has only 2 tense but three time references.“He will come tomorrow” refers to future time. But it is in the present tense.

Traditional grammar resorts to meaning in defining grammatical categories. For example, an interrogative sentence is described as a sentence that raises questions. It is not necessary that all interrogatives should be question. “Would you mind closing the door” is an interrogative sentence. But it is not a question. Since it is a request, should it be called ‘an’ imperative sentence. Nesfield defines a noun as the name of person, place or thing. According to this definition, words like ‘red’ ‘green’ should be nouns as they are names of colours. To include abstract noun like charity, kindness. Wren and Martin explained the definition to include things that “we can think of, but cannot perceive by the senses”. Is anything that we can think of is a noun? We can think of a John as sleeping. Is sleeping in ‘John is sleeping’ a noun? In “he went there” –‘he’ and ‘there’ refer to a person and a place respectively. Are these two words noun? Is referencing the same as meaning? The structuralists therefore thought it best to avoid using meaning in defining word classes. They introduced pointers called ‘formal markers’. A structural definition of a noun can be something like a word that can function as the subject or object, can be proceeded by an article can take plural and genitive form.

There may be correlation between form and meaning but it is wrong to assume the grammar is to do with meaning.

Note:

Many notable writers have expressed various opinions on English grammar, such as the following—

English grammar is a description of the usages of the English language by good speakers and writers of the present day.—Whitney

A description of account of the nature, build, constitution, or make of a language is called its grammar—Meiklejohn

Grammar teaches the laws of language, and the right method of using it in speaking and writing.—Patterson

Grammar is the science of letter; hence the science of using words correctly.—Abbott

The English word grammar relates only to the laws which govern the significant forms of words, and the construction of the sentence.—Richard Grant White

These are sufficient to suggest several distinct notions about English grammar—

Synopsis of the above.

(1) It makes rules to tell us how to use words.

(2) It is a record of usage which we ought to follow.

(3) It is concerned with the forms of the language.

(4) English has no grammar in the sense of forms, or inflections, but takes account merely of the nature and the uses of words in sentences.